Sunday, February 04, 2007

The San Francisco Round House

From: "Bob Tieslau" tieslau@volcano.net

I have been researching my family history and have just now gotten a picture of my Uncle, Henry Tieslau, with his work crew. There are about forty men in the picture. He was the owner of the company. On the back of the picture it says, San Francisco Roundhouse, 1915. His daughter is still alive and said that he built the roundhouse at that time. Maybe it was just an expansion, I don't know. It is a rather interesting picture. ...

Uncle Henry and his brother August also built the "Mousehole" in Truckee that goes under the railway which they talking about replacing. He did that in 1929.

... Do you have any information on the building of a roundhouse in San Francisco in 1915?

—Bob Tieslau

Henry Tieslau, with his work crew; San Francisco Roundhouse.Courtesy Bob Tieslau Collection.

Henry Tieslau and crew

Henry Tieslau and crew on the back it says, Roundhouse, San Francisco 1915
Henry is standing at the far right. He was the boss and the owner of the company that tore down some of the buildings and houses at the worlds fair on Yerba Buena Island. He had a scrap yard right where the Race Track is today. It was taken away from him by eminent domain because they said they wanted to build a road there but they built the track instead. He and his brother August had quite a company building roads and other things.

A roundhouse was built in San Francisco by the State Belt Railroad apparently sometime from 1913 to 1918. I can't give a more precise time. One website about the State Belt Railroad states its roundhouse was built in 1913 while another website states it was built in 1918. The roundhouse construction was no doubt reported by San Francisco newspapers then, so if one really wanted to pin down the date, microfilm of San Francisco papers could be reviewed by making an interlibrary loan request to the California State Library in Sacramento (the San Francisco newspapers at the State Library for that period are the Bulletin, the Morning Call, the Chronicle and the Examiner). Doing such research could be a very tedious process, though.

The State Belt Railroad roundhouse is now an office building, no longer used for railroad purposes.

The rural kids in the 50’s rode bikes to school. You took whatever path was best for you. This lad looks like he is carrying a string of Christmas lights, but it doesn’t look like winter. Wonder what’s going on!

Camping out in 1918.

This was the 30’s, and this sharecropper’s son was working behind the plow, barefoot and all. You can bet there was a mule on the front of that plow.

This couple pose in an early version of American Gothic, with a groundhog killed on their Manchester farm. It's dinner! Note: Photo taken circa 1914, from a family photo album.

A postcard from the 1800’s advertising a knife throwing act with the traveling circus. How would you like that job?

A Strongwoman balances a piano and the pianist on her chest. 1920That’s some chest that can do that!

London, in the 1920’s, this was a telephone engineer. What a job!

Two young girls in West Germans street chat with their grandparents in the window of their home in the Eastern sector, separated only by a barbed wire barricade. It was a common occurrence for families, who had once only lived on the opposite side of the street from one another, to become separated by the ever growing Berlin Wall.

A Gibson Girl in her corset in the early 1900’s. Those poor women. This was one fad that really hurt a lot of women for life.

Lillian Russell. A plus size beauty in the late 1800s. She was around 200 lb at the peak of her career. She was considered "The American Beauty." Weighwatchers would want to enroll her today!